Help Protect Habitat for Grizzlies in the Clearwater River Valley

Hungry and searching for that which sustains them, grizzly bears in the Clearwater River Valley are waking from a winter of hibernation. While grizzlies can sprint up to 55 km/hr, they are slow moving after six months of living off their food stores. Young cubs are getting antsy and ready to feed; mothers without food won’t be able to provide enough milk for the one to four offspring that were born while they waited out the cold winter.

Stretching their strong but tight limbs, they emerge from their earthen dens ready to begin their trek west towards Springwater Creek and the Clearwater River. Their urge to find food draws them down to lower elevations where the spring bloom of vegetation awaits them. Descending from the upland area surrounding Battle Mountain, the moist, warm Interior Cedar Hemlock (ICH) forest surrounds them. The fresh shoots of sedges and skunk cabbage provide roughage and crucial nutrients, beckoning the grizzlies ever closer to the riparian and swampy areas where they grow.

The ICH zone boasts the most diversity of tree species in the province; many species of spruce and their hybrids, lodgepole pine, black cottonwood, trembling aspen and paper birch are among numerous western red cedar and hemlock trees found here.

Later in the summer, berries from Oregon grape, huckleberry, blueberry and even devil’s club will help sustain the entire grizzly family, allowing them to put on the necessary weight to endure another long winter. Right now however, they must move in order to keep themselves and their young fed; in the lowlands along the Clearwater River grizzlies can forage and snack on the Valley’s wild strawberries. But in order to get to their summer range they must travel across the peninsula of privately owned land between the southern lobes of Wells Gray Provincial Park.

Friends of conservation, we need your help to protect the wildlife corridor in the Clearwater River Valley for these migratory mammals.

As a natural property without buildings or structures to maintain, the ongoing costs to TLC are minimal. The sparsely settled local community, including Thompson Rivers University and Trevor Goward, Lichenologist, naturalist and TLC Volunteer Warden, understand the importance of supporting the area as a key wildlife corridor.

“The existence of two spatially separate lobes of protection – lowland to the west, subalpine to the east – raises the question of connectivity across the intervening private lands,” says Trevor Goward. “Deer, Cougar, Moose, Wolf, Black Bear and Grizzly Bear are all migratory in this portion of British Columbia, travelling back and forth between their summer and winter ranges twice each year. Key travel corridors include well defined ridges and, in the case of bears, stream courses, both well expressed in this portion of the Upper Clearwater Valley.”

“The location and orientation of the terrain suggests that it would be a practical travel route for grizzly bears to travel between low elevations along the Clearwater River, and to return in early autumn to denning site(s) in the mountains,” says David Moskowitz, biologist, photographer, outdoor educator and author. “Confirming this impression, we encountered a mother black bear with two cubs during one of my traverses.”

TLC has recently achieved great success in the Clearwater River Valley with the protection of 11.2 hectares of wetland to north of the wildlife corridor in March. TLC previously acquired 31 hectares of adjacent wetland in 2013 through direct purchase (3 hectares) and through receipt of a donation through the federal Ecogift Program (28 hectares). This next phase of the Clearwater Wetland and Wildlife Corridor will provide protection to a further 4 hectares to the south of the wetlands.

The lush vegetation found in moist fens and streamsides such as those in the Clearwater River Valley provide high densities of prime summer vegetation, important for both food and habitat cover. In areas where food and cover are abundant, grizzly ranges can be as small as 24 km²; however, where food resources are scattered, the range can be up to 10 times as large to provide adequate resources.

Grizzly bears are provincially “Blue-Listed” and scheduled as “Special Concern” by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC). More than half of Canada’s grizzly bears live in B.C., but with residential housing and resort development pressure growing in the province, refuges and migratory paths like this are of growing concern.

Currently undeveloped, TLC plans to protect the property as is. To date we have raised $25,000 towards the purchase, however, should we fall short of our $75,000 goal this year, the wildlife corridor will be at risk of devastation.

You can make a difference for migratory mammals in the Clearwater River Valley. Your financial support is essential as we work to ensure connectivity for species like the Blue-Listed grizzly bear and to help fight growing habitat fragmentation.

Please consider donating today at conservancy.bc.ca or calling 1-877-485-2422 to make your donation towards the Clearwater Wildlife Corridor acquisition. Donations made are eligible for 2018 tax receipts.

Thank you for your dedication to protecting important habitat throughout B.C. Species-at-risk would not be here today without concerned supporters like you!

Sincerely,

Cathy Armstrong
Executive Director

P.S. Should the Clearwater Wildlife Corridor Campaign not raise the funds necessary to complete the purchase, gifts made to the Acquisition Fund will be held until the successful completion of a future acquisition.